Dynetech's CEO muses on life online

The Bottom Line

November 13, 2009|By Beth Kassab, Sentinel Columnist

Dynetech founder Laurence Pino (center at right) has had a tumultuous couple of years leading up to his filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last month and an investigation into his companies by Texas regulators.

Pino has chronicled many of this thoughts -- on everything from layoffs to parenting styles to President Barack Obama as a messiah -- on his blog, LifeInBusiness.com.

It's an exhibit of remarkable candor for a chief executive officer.

I was surprised when I called Pino and found out that in addition to the blog he has about 15 years worth of notebooks that he calls his "chronicles" that are unpublished.

And, he acknowledges, there's good reason for that. Some of the blog posts are a little out there.

One excerpt about Obama from Aug. 17, 2009 includes:

"President Obama, ever seeking common ground, whether it be in religious beliefs, or political orders, or fundamental rights, appears more fully committed to the underlying condition of being human. Is that truly messianic, as some think; or apostolic? It's probably messianic, if the truth be told."

The unpublished works are often even more philosophical, said Pino, who was a philosophy major at Notre Dame.

"I spend an awful lot of time on anthropology and hominids and both evolution as well as cosmology," he said.

He read to me a portion of one of the thoughts he's dictated into a digital recorder and transcribed. It was about the expansion and contraction of the universe.

"If I published that stuff on the blog, I think you'd probably have people reading it and saying, 'What planet is this guy coming from?'"

The blog also includes sweet musings about his wife and children, even compositions he has created for them on the piano.

He discusses the pain of the economic downturn. Of layoffs he oversaw in 2007 he says, "I took it personally and suffered it immensely."

One thing he doesn't talk about on the blog is Dynetech's bankruptcy, and he didn't want to talk to me about it either.

"My focus is on attempting to get the best possible resolution for the stakeholders," he said.

He called the process "enormously" difficult on a personal level.

"It never, never would have dawned on me that I would make that decision," he said of filing for Chapter 11 protection.

He said he has shed most of his employees, down to 56 from a high of 297.

For now, dealing with the fallout from the bankruptcy and other problems seems to have slowed the writing on his blog and personal chronicles.

"I don't know if it's a stress release or not," he said. "I would say it's more of an intellectual release. In times when I am in the midst of issues, is a time I tend not to create anything of value."

Black Friday odds

There is something slightly perverse about trying to make big money by wagering on how much others are going to spend or not spend. But with today marking exactly two weeks until Black Friday, retailers' most anticipated day of the year, that is exactly what is happening at Bookmaker.com.

For the first time this year, the site is offering odds on how many people will shop and just how much they will spend on the day that traditionally pushes retailers out of the red and into the black.

A respectable Black Friday is projected, even considering the astronomical odds that many bettors are unemployed. The best odds -- 46 percent -- are that between 161 million and 180 million people will shake off their turkey hangovers and shop in stores or online. Odds are 40 percent that they will each spend between $300 and $400.